Scientist Quotes

A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

A theory has only the alternative of being right or wrong. A model has a third possibility: it may be right, but irrelevant.

We're one of the most highly regulated industries, and we have to pay attention to what government is doing.

The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.

I see harm reduction as a way of engaging people as part of that path to recovery.

To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.

The National Academy of Sciences would be unable to give a unanimous decision if asked whether the sun would rise tomorrow.

Widespread caffeine use explains a lot about the twentieth century.

Pop science goes flying off in all kinds of fashionable directions, and it often drags a lot of SF writers with it. I've been led astray like that myself at times.

I've supported myself by writing since 1992, and I'm probably very nearly unemployable by now because employers are likely to be put off by the long gap.

I've been taking longer to write stories lately.

I'm rarely grabbed by anything the way I was when I was 10 years younger. About the only relatively new artists whose albums I own are Beck, and They Might Be Giants.

I think new writers everywhere need opportunities to get published.

I hadn't given much thought to the prospect of a Hugo nomination at the time it happened, but obviously once you're nominated, winning one seems a bit less far-fetched than before.

I don't have any structured grand plan; I just intend to keep writing about the things that interest me-some of which change, some of which don't.

I admire David Lynch so much, and I think he made some bad decisions with Lost Highway.

Fandom is about fandom, it's a great big social club.

Diaspora starts about a thousand years from now. Most of human civilisation has moved inside computers; essentially, a major branch of our descendants consists of conscious software.

Being rewarded for anything other than the quality of their work is the fastest way to screw-up a writer-and it isn't only new ones who suffer from that.

Australian SF book publishing has undergone a boom recently, and sometimes it's easier for new writers to sell a book to a local publisher first, which then makes a US edition more likely.

A story in Asimov's is read by hundreds of thousands of people.

We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown.

The quest of the absolute leads into the four-dimensional world.

The mathematics is not there till we put it there.

Shuffling is the only thing which Nature cannot undo.

Proof is an idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.

Probably the simplest hypothesis... is that there may be a slow process of annihilation of matter.

It is sound judgment to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.